International Authors Book Club

Read an author of your choosing from a predetermined country. January’s nation is Finland. We will meet each third Thursday of the month to discuss your author, their works, and any themes they explore.

The suggested authors, all native born, represent just a fraction of Finland’s literary tradition.

The bolded titles are available through your Santa Fe Public Library as books or ebooks (Hoopla or Overdrive/Libby).

For disability or translation accommodations, please email library@santafenm.gov or call the Library.

Suggested authors:

Monika Fagerholm, author of The American Girl, Glitter Scene and Who Killed Bambi?

Fagerholm is an award-winning Swedish-speaking Finnish author. Her third novel, The American Girl, tells the story of a girl from Coney Island who disappears in Helsinki in the 1970s. The mystery, which is also a meditation on female friendship, won Sweden’s August Prize in 2005. It’s the first in a two-part series, followed by Glitter Scene.

Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, author of The Rabbit Back Literature Society and Where the Trains Turn (ebook)

Jääskeläinen has twice won the Kuvastaja Fantasy Prize given by Finland's Tolkien Society and four times won the Atorax Award for Fantasy. Most American reviewers reference the TV series Twin Peaks when describing his works to U.S. readers.

Leena Krohn, author of numerous award-winning works

While not readily available in English, this iconic, award-winning science fiction/fantasy/horror writer has built a considerable following in her native land. Examples of her work appear in these collections: The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, The New Weird, The Other Aliens, Sisters of the Revolution and The Weird.

Topics include humans' relationships with themselves and the world, morality, borders between reality and illusion, and different kinds of artificial intelligence.

Tove Jansson, author of The Summer Book, The True Deceiver and the Moomins comic strip

The author and painter based the characters in her internationally syndicated strip The Moomins on friends and family members and dealt with WWII, nuclear war and environmental issues. Her works inspired fantasy author Terry Pratchett to write. Her story is told in the Young Adult graphic novel Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World.

Väinö Linna, author of The Unknown Solider and the Under the North Star Trilogy

Linna relied on his experiences fighting in The Continuation War (1941-44), Finland’s attempt to regain territory lost during The Winter War (1939-40) when the Soviet Union invaded. Gritty and realistic, the novel intends to shatter the myth of a noble, obedient Finnish soldier. It is now required for most Finnish high school students.

Rosa Liksom, author of The Colonel’s Wife and Dark Paradise

In The Colonel’s Wife, an elderly woman looks back on her years in the thrall of Nazism. Both her authoritarian tendencies and her love of nature are vividly evoked in a novel that resonates during these political times.

Elias Lönnrot, author of The Kalevala and The Kanteletar (both ebooks) 

The Kalevala is a collection of Finnish and Karelian poetry, compiled by Lönnrot from oral folklore and mythology over a seven-year span traveling the country. First published in 1835, it is considered one of the most important works of Finnish literature and regarded as the national epic of Finland.

Veijo Meri, author The Manila Rope and several historical works

The novel explores the experiences of a group of Finnish soldiers during World War II and delve into the harsh realities and absurdities of war, highlighting the human capacity for resilience and camaraderie in the face of adversity.

Sofi Oksanen, author of Purge

Set against the backdrop of Estonia's tumultuous history, this narrative intertwines the lives of two women from different generations, revealing their shared struggles and secrets. The older woman grapples with her past marked by betrayal and survival during Soviet occupation, she encounters a young trafficking victim. Their unexpected meeting unravels a tale of love, power, and redemption, exploring the enduring scars of political oppression and personal trauma.

Arto Paasilinna, author of Year of the Hare

A burnt-out journalist on assignment in the Finnish countryside hits a hare with his car, leading to a life-changing experience. He decides to leave his job, wife, and mundane life behind to live in the wilderness with the injured hare he has nursed back to health. The story follows his humorous and sometimes philosophical adventures as he adapts to his new life, meeting a variety of eccentric characters along the way.

Hannu Rajaniemi, author of The Causal Angel, Summerland, and The Quantum Thief

In a future where privacy is a luxury and reality is shaped by quantum technology, a master thief named finds himself imprisoned in a virtual world. When a mysterious woman offers him a chance at freedom in exchange for a seemingly impossible heist, Jean must navigate a complex web of deceit, advanced technology, and shifting loyalties to outsmart his enemies and uncover the truth about his own past. With its mind-bending concepts and intricate plot, The Quantum Thief starts the acclaimed Jean la Flambeur series.

Johanna Sinisalo, author of The Core of the Sun, Not Before Sundown and Troll: A Love Story (ebook)

Set in an alternative historical present, in an extreme welfare state that holds public health and social stability above all else, The Core of the Sun follows a young woman whose growing addiction to illegal chili peppers leads her on an adventure into a world where love, sex, and free will are all controlled by the state.

Winner of the Finlandia Award, Troll: A Love Story is an enchanting novel that has become an international sensation. Angel, a young photographer, comes home from a night of carousing to find a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a wounded, helpless young troll. He takes it in, not suspecting the dramatic consequences of this decision. 

Pajtim Statovci, author of Bolla, Crossing and My Cat Yugoslavia

In Crossing, the death of Enver Hoxha and the loss of his father leave Bujar growing up in the ruins of Communist Albania and of his own family. Only his fearless best friend Agim--who is facing his own realizations about his gender and sexuality--gives him hope for the future. Together the two decide to leave everything behind and try their luck in Italy. But the struggle to feel at home--in a foreign country and even in one's own body--will have corrosive effects.

Märta Tikkanen, author Love Story of the Century: A Memoir (ebook)

Hailed an immediate classic of Finnish literature upon its publication, Tikkanen's verse novel is an evocative portrait of one woman's fraught relationship with her alcoholic husband, inspired by the author's own experience.

Antti Tuomainen, author of The Burning Stones, The Man Who Died and Palm Beach, Finland

This Nordic Noir master – Little Siberia, The Mine and The Rabbit Factor trilogy – has dabbles in other genres, focusing on an apocalyptic climate disaster in The Healer.

Maria Turtschaninoff, author of the Red Abbey Chronicles trilogy (audiobooks)

Set in an isolated abbey populated only by women, the books combine feminism with mythology. Turtschaninoff won the Finlandia Junior Prize for young-adult and children’s literature with the series-opening Maresi in 2014. 

Mika Waltari, author of The Dark Angel, The Etruscan, The Egyptian, The Roman, The Secret of the Kingdom and The Wanderer (all ebooks)

This master of historical fiction was one of the most prolific Finnish writers ever, best known internationally for the oft-banned The Egyptian.

Jaakko Yli-Juonikas, author of Neuromaani

This one-of-a-kind 2012 Finnish novel is at once a brain-science thriller, campus satire and “choose-your-own-adventure” labyrinth: every few pages the narrator gives the reader branching instructions, sending them ricocheting through numbered micro-chapters, footnotes and false leads as two neuroscientists’ shady research empire collides with a hallucinatory murder case in Turku. It may never be available in English, reportedly deemed untranslatable by publishers.